As Nietzsche Would Say...

As many of you know I am registered in a class entitled "The Literature of Political Dissidence"

I was extremely excited about this class when I first saw it. The reading list includes Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, the Black Panthers. "That's right up my alley" I said.

You know when you are so sure about something, but it turns out that you are horribly, horribly wrong? So do I.

This class appears innocent enough, a 300 level English course. That can't be hard right? Wrong. This class is hardcore.

12 textbooks, 2 papers, a midterm, a spoken word project, 10 quizzes and a final later and I'm scared.

We've already read two novels and done two quizzes (let me remind you that I've only been in school for two weeks).

Its the other students in the class that are the worst part. It's alright if you can't understand a single word the professor has said so long as everyone is clueless together. But oooh no, not this group of intellectual go-getters. They routinely drop words like Galvanizing, Prose, Catalyst, and Nihilism. They begin sentences by saying "As referenced in Nietzsche's later works..." followed by "According to Aristotle...".

Who are these people? Where did they come from? Did I miss the list of pre-reading which clearly included the entire works of every philosopher with a disturbingly long last name?

Despite my better judgement I'm going to stick it out for two reasons. 1. I'm enjoying the challenge and really want to succeed. 2. I want to be one of those people who throws everything back to Immanuel Kant and Derrida. I think these geniuses can teach me how to do this.

Just to give you an example, I've included a sentence from one of the textbooks. Enjoy.

"But my view is that Nietzsche's remarks about rigorous philosophy, and his projection of what is essentially a new hermeneutics, offer an alternative to his talk about perspectives. This alternative language has the advantage of not only avoiding epistemological paradoxes accompanying the image of multiple perspectives, but also of enabling resistance to be critical, at least in principle."